How to protect yourself from art scams: the seven patterns and the one habit that defeats them

The art market’s reputation for opacity attracts people who sell nothing but the opacity. We receive a message every week from a collector who was approached by a “gallery” that does not exist, offered an “edition” of an artist who does not exist, or asked to pay for a real work into an account that was not the gallery’s. The scams are few and they repeat. Here are the seven we see, and the one habit that defeats every one of them.

1. The gallery that is a website

A polished site, stock photographs of a space, a roster of artists whose images were taken from other galleries. The tell: no physical address you can visit, a phone that goes to voicemail, and a company that does not appear in any registry. Check: search the address; call; ask for a video call from the space with the work in view. A real gallery will show you the work on camera in a minute.

2. The artist who exists only here

A name, a biography, a style, and no trace anywhere else: no other gallery, no exhibition listing, no press, no studio. Check: search the name with the words “gallery”, “exhibition” and “museum”. An artist with a market has a trail.

3. The “investment edition”

Prints or “limited editions” of a well-known artist’s existing paintings, sold with a promised appreciation and often a buy-back guarantee. These are reproductions; the artist’s estate may never have authorised them; and the guarantee dies with the company. Check: an edition is made by the artist as an edition, is signed and numbered by them, and has a publisher you can name.

4. The account that is not the gallery’s

A real gallery, a real work, a real invoice, and an email (from a compromised or look-alike address) asking you to pay into a “new” account. Check: call the gallery on a number you already had and confirm the account by voice before any transfer. We never change bank details by email.

5. The overpayment

An artist or small seller is “paid” by a buyer with a cheque or transfer for more than the price, asked to refund the difference, and the original payment bounces. This one targets sellers, including artists. Check: never refund before the funds have cleared, and never to a different account.

6. Crypto, gift cards and urgency

Any seller who asks to be paid in cryptocurrency, gift cards or through an intermediary you do not know, and who needs the answer today because “another collector is interested”, is running a script. Check: real sellers take bank transfers and cards, issue invoices, and give you a week.

7. The certificate that comes later

The work is real, the seller is real, but the certificate will be “sent once the artist signs”. Months pass. Check: the certificate exists before the sale; the invoice names it; if it does not, the price is not complete and neither is the sale.

The one habit

Verify the seller, not the story. A story can be anything; a seller is an address, a registry entry, a phone that answers, a bank account in the company’s name, an invoice with a tax id, a certificate ready before payment, and other buyers you can find. Every scam above fails at least two of those checks, and every legitimate gallery, ours included, passes all of them in an afternoon.

If it already happened

Keep everything: messages, invoices, transfer receipts, the website (save it as PDF).

Tell your bank at once; a transfer can sometimes be recalled within hours.

Report to the platform where you met the seller and to the police of your country; in Mexico, to the Policía Cibernética and the Condusef when a bank is involved.

Tell the artist whose name was used; they usually want to know and sometimes can help.

Nobody has ever been scammed by a seller they could visit, call, and find in a registry, who issued an invoice and handed over a certificate before being paid.

How avant.dev helps

Art advisory is what we do every day from Mexico City: we help collectors discover, acquire and build collections of original contemporary art, with the paperwork, the delivery and the certificate handled. If you would like a second opinion before your next acquisition, book a free 30-minute consultation or browse the works available now.